I'm still waiting for the remainder of the parts. Especially the mainboard (Asus A8N SLI Deluxe) is currently very hard to get. It supposedly is a great mainboard and stores are selling them much faster than Asus can supply them.I was promised that my mainboard would ship this Friday, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. It's a pretty important part of the new PC...

Diew, a five year-old Thai elephant, demonstrates how to use and flush a toilet at an elephant camp in Chiang Mai province, in northern Thailand. Having taught Thailand's elephants to paint, dance and play musical instruments, their Thai handlers are now toilet-training the beasts, media reported.

An Italian man committed suicide out of grief over his comatose wife. Several hours later the woman came out of the coma she had been in for four months after having had a stroke.

The man, 71, had visited his 67-year-old wife at least once a day. They had spent their whole lives together and had no children. He was very pessimistic about the chance of her recovery and finally took his own life in their garage. Some twelve hours later, the woman awoke and asked about her husband.

After the failed attempt in December, the European Commission tries again to sneak in the software patents directive. Thanks to Poland the decision was postponed last time. Now the EC added it again at the last moment to the agenda for the meeting on Monday of the Council of Ministers of Agriculture and Fisheries.

It is added again as a so-called 'A-item' that is normally not discussed or voted on, but accepted by acclamation. But there SHOULD be a discussion, as there are a lot of people that at least have doubts or are plainly against the patents.Dutch minister Brinkhorst is in favor of the proposition, but the Parliament asked him to withold any further support. So far he has refused to comply.

Appearently there is a very big lobby active to get the patents directive approved. The big companies like to try to register a patent for everything they can think of. And then sit on the patents and/or sue anyone who might be violating it.But small companies and individuals who come up with great pieces of software don't have the money to register patents or to buy licenses.

Obviously the big companies have a lot of cash to spend on persuading governments to accept the directive. I hope Poland or anyone else will put their foot down again to prevent this bad thing from getting accepted.